


Belonging

by Curreeus



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Basch and Elizaveta also get mentioned, Germania is definitely a thing, Gilbert is there, M/M, i guess that needs a warning, i mean i mention the world wars and people dying and hitler is implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 20:37:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8682553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curreeus/pseuds/Curreeus
Summary: Roderich can’t remember having ever seen his grandfather smile. But maybe, in the end, that didn't matter so much.Written because my girlfriend dragged me into Geraus hell among other things, based on a lot of her headcanons regarding Roderich (like his horrific childhood, status as a bastard child of Rome and Germania, and the timeline of the chair).I don't really know what it is? It started out as me exploring the character dynamics and turned angsty and long quick because that's kind of how I roll i guessCrappy cliche title is crappy but it's 2am and I just wanted to post it, so... please enjoy (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aristokratischer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aristokratischer/gifts).



Roderich can’t remember having ever seen his grandfather smile.

Perhaps it’s because he never had a lot of reason to smile, especially around Roderich – a bastard child of the Roman Empire and an outcast by those from the north, he never belonged anywhere, and especially not under the wing of Germania with those he was told to call his siblings.

All the others were so much stronger than him, they would have made their grandfather smile.

Gilbert with his relentless force and wicked grin, Elizaveta with her smiling eyes and hard hands that tamed wild horses with ease, Basch with his perpetual frown and fleeting, dry humour, chiselling out his own place to the west from rock and stone.

All of them were special, all of them belonged – except for him, with his dark curly hair and violet eyes; a mistake, a misprint, an anomaly that wasn’t meant to be and didn’t really have a place without others to rely on.

And as Roderich got older, all he remembered of his grandfather was a pair of strong hands that whittled an existence out of the cruel wilderness of the north, a deep and stern voice that reprimanded him sternly and a pair of cold, ice-blue eyes; like the frozen tundra that capped his Alps.

He found that he preferred to forget.

But time has a way of recalling the past, in ways that sting and hurt – but ways that comfort and heal, too.

When Ludwig came into existence, Roderich didn’t think much of him other than considering him just another addition to the face of Europe. He was Prussia’s, and surely that meant he was an enemy – the friend of my enemy is also my enemy, or something like that.

But the first time he met him in person he was struck by how he seemed to be made up entirely of memories from times long past.

Ludwig was all golden fields and azure sky; he was the image of the man who had taken Roderich in so long ago but been unable to love him the way he’d craved to be loved, and even though Ludwig still had the awkward body of someone who had left boyhood but was not yet a man, Roderich recognised the deepening voice, the large, solid hands, and the frozen tundra eyes.

But Ludwig was not his grandfather.

Not even close.

Ludwig was solid and dependable in some ways but soft and breakable in others, particularly when Roderich first met him. There were parts of him that readily responded to the way Prussia was shaping him into a regimented soldier, but there were other parts that spoke of a gentle heart that felt and loved and broke in the same way Roderich’s did.

And it gave him pause whenever he tried to slot Ludwig into one box or the other.

Years passed and Ludwig grew into the role of Germany, a role picked out for him by everyone else – he turned from a boy of seventeen into a man of twenty almost overnight, shooting up in height and filling out in the shoulders, and everyone who saw him recognised him as the biggest threat in Europe; recognised just how much like his grandfather he was.

Only Roderich seemed to realise just how different they were.

Ludwig was not a frequent visitor to his house, but when he was he was always quiet and polite and seemed to respect him, despite the stories that Prussia would no doubt have told him about Roderich.

When he caught Ludwig watching him some days, eyes wide and bright as they watched Roderich create art – whether it be from sound or spun sugar and chocolate – his heart melted as that deep voice softened and requested “could I try?”

_Could I actually create something beautiful like that?_

He couldn’t refuse.

Ludwig did everything with a thorough seriousness that would have made Roderich’s grandfather proud, but he did it with a loving care and a quiet passion that would have confused him. When Roderich taught him the foundations of music and let him loose on the piano, he seemed quietly excited at the fact that his large hands were actually a benefit to him, not like the hindrance they were to his ability to be delicate in other things. When Roderich spent afternoons baking with him, Ludwig was careful and gentle and nothing like his warlike brother or his stronghold of a grandfather.

He… he was like Roderich.

 Afternoons spent with him soon turned into weekends, and then sometimes Ludwig would appear during the week as well – they’d spend long quiet evenings together, Roderich teaching Ludwig about everything delicate and soft in his history that Gilbert would have glossed over for being “weak”. He taught him that love was not a weakness, but a strength; he taught him that love should never hurt. He taught him that alliances were not worth Ludwig’s sense of self respect, and he tried to make damn sure that this boy, this beautiful, golden boy, would never be hurt and taught to hate himself in the same way that Roderich had been, centuries and centuries ago.

Ludwig was much taller and stronger than Roderich ever was, but he couldn’t help wanting to take care of him, in whatever ways he could, before…

…before the world went to hell.

After everything, after Ferdinand and long standing tensions coming to a head and millions across the world dead, they’d thought the wars were over – it was the war to end all wars, after all. None of them really expected being thrown into a second one so soon, especially not one that would take so much from all of them.

Roderich was in close quarters with Ludwig throughout them, but he wasn’t _Ludwig_. He was Germany.

And god how great the difference was.

Ludwig didn’t visit Roderich in the way he used to for years, despite being in close alliance with him.

If he did show up on Roderich’s doorstep, it was in the company of a stern-faced official, or even Gilbert, who had become even more wary and sharp-eyed than he had been, and had a dangerous sheen of desperation hovering behind his eyes.

And for the first time, when Roderich looked into Ludwig’s frozen tundra eyes, Roderich saw nothing of the boy he’d come to love and want to protect – he saw his grandfather.

He saw harshness and stone and a solid resolve to “do what it takes” even if that cut to the bone, even if that destroyed him, even when it ignored everything Roderich had painstakingly taught him, and he felt his blood run cold.

He tried not to let his heart grow hard at that, even with camps and fires and burning and _pain_ and screaming and the eradication of people, his people, Ludwig’s people, people who didn’t deserve to die for existing.

But after the fire was over and the ashes began to cool, when the madman had consumed himself and the madness he’d spread had started to be burned out of the rotting nation, after Roderich was confined to a chair and was at the mercy of those who claimed to be his “friends”, that’s when he saw Ludwig again.

It was one bright afternoon, and Roderich was in his tiny garden outside his Vienna house – one of the only homes of his that remained after the many bombings – reading under the shade of a tree, his eyes starting to droop behind his glasses as the day began to draw to a close.

He was always tired, nowadays.

Slowly though, he became aware of soft footfalls, somewhat hesitant as they approached, and he looked up to see a familiar broad shouldered figure standing at his front gate, looking nervous as he silently requested to come in.

Roderich took in the hesitant slope to Ludwig’s brow and the nervous tuck to his shoulders, as though he were trying to make himself smaller, and when Ludwig looked up at Roderich, there were the frozen-tundra eyes – but now, they had thawed and warmed.

Roderich froze for a moment, lost in cool blue, but then he smiled wistfully, and after a few moments, he realised he was staring and beckoned the figure in.

There was the Ludwig he’d missed for years – and despite everything that had happened, he couldn’t bring himself to turn him away.

Ludwig crossed the small yard and stopped a few feet from Roderich’s chair, looking like he didn’t quite know what to do or say or where to look, and memorising the outline of his boots while Roderich looked at him with a measured, level gaze.

Then Roderich let out a soft chuckle, and broke the silence between them.

“Would you like to come in? It’s getting on in the day, and I had rather fancied coffee a little while ago.”

Ludwig bit his lip uncertainly and nodded, and Roderich gestured to the chair.

“Could you take me inside then, please, Ludwig? I still can’t manoeuvre myself too quickly in this.”

Ludwig jumped when he realised what Roderich was pointing at, having clearly been avoiding looking at the chair, but he quickly moved behind Roderich to push him back to the entranceway of the house. The two steps up to the front door proved a challenge – as they had for the past few months – but Ludwig deftly turned the chair and pulled it backwards up them as gently as he could, carefully serious as always. It was a gentler motion than the times both Elizaveta and Alfred had done it, and Roderich was silently marvelling at it while the door was opened and he was pushed into the house.

When Ludwig finally got them to the kitchen Roderich ushered him into a chair at the table and rose unsteadily from his own chair, shuffling slowly about the kitchen and busying himself with mugs and spoons and the steady drip of the percolator, humming to himself and filling the silence until Ludwig was ready to speak.

But Ludwig was silent, up until Roderich had placed the milkjug and sugar bowl on the table – both purely for Ludwig’s benefit, since he took neither – and seated himself back in his chair, waiting for Ludwig to speak.

For a few moments, there was silence. Then, quietly, Ludwig took a deep breath, and murmured a single sentence, gaze fixed to the floor, like it had been the whole time.

“I’m sorry… for everything.”

 Roderich froze, unsure how to react, his mouth opening slightly and his eyes widening.

No-one had ever apologised to him before, at least not ever outside of it serving a diplomatic function.

But as Ludwig finally raised his gaze to Roderich’s, Roderich was shocked to find tears brimming in his eyes – and when Ludwig let out a stifled sob, Roderich’s heart broke.

He realised with a jolt that without him, without Roderich to allow him to, there would have been no one to let him be soft, and hurt, and broken; no one to let him mourn what he’d done to his and everyone else’s people and what his leader had done to him.

No-one to tell him that this pain would pass; but that it was allowed to hurt like hell until it did.

Wordlessly, he rolled himself back a little from the table and opened his arms, and Ludwig slid from his chair, kneeling in front of Roderich and collapsing into the embrace, pressing his face to Roderich’s shoulder and finally letting the dam open.

Roderich just gently stroked the short blonde hairs on the back of his neck, murmuring gently into his ear.

“It’s alright Ludwig, it’s over, and I forgive you. I forgive you, I forgive you. Let it out.”

Ludwig tried to pull back and say something, but his shaking gasps gave him away, and Roderich just shook his head, pulling him closer.

“You’re safe with me. You’re allowed to feel, Ludwig, and you’ve been so strong for so long – now it’s time to let go.”

Ludwig just shook his head against Roderich’s chest, murmuring with a shaky voice.

“How can you not hate me? You, and Gilbert, and everyone… I hurt you all so much, I was so horrifically stupid, I did so much evil…”

Roderich shushed him, stroking a hand from his neck to his back and rubbing gently.

“Ludwig, I can’t tell you that this wasn’t as bad as you think, and I won’t tell you that you haven’t done bad things – but I will tell you that I know you can make it better. I know you can build your country back up to better than it was before, I know very well you’re strong enough to do that.”

He pulled back and smiled gently down at Ludwig’s tear-tracked face, wiping a stray tear away with his thumb.

“But for now, for just a moment… you are allowed to not be strong. You’re allowed to hurt. Because in all of this… you were the one who was failed the most. It will take time to heal, and you will have to work hard, but we will all forgive you eventually.”

Ludwig let out another sob, and Roderich, emboldened, pressed a soft kiss to his hairline before holding him a bit closer.

“I’m here Ludwig. You’re safe now.”

Roderich wasn’t sure how long it was before Ludwig’s sobs quietened, nor before his breathing evened out, but eventually, Ludwig shifted, and Roderich heard a joint somewhere in his – no doubt very cramped – legs crack.

He smiled.

“I think it’s time for me to bake something this afternoon, would you like to help?”

Ludwig nodded against Roderich’s shoulder, pulling himself up and rubbing an arm across his red and puffy eyes in embarrassment, and Roderich sat up a little straighter in his chair.

“I would let you choose but I have been wanting strudel for days and no-one has brought it to me, so it’s time to take matters into my own hands.”

He chuckled a little at Ludwig, who gave a watery smile back, and with no further ado they were gathering ingredients and peeling apples and making pastry, Roderich scattering flour everywhere and Ludwig trying to be carefully clean and tidy.

They ate it together while it was still warm, with freshly whipped cream and light conversation, and it was there, watching Ludwig chuckle a little at something he’d said, that Roderich felt something settle in his chest.

Ludwig was all golden fields and azure sky. He was tall and broad shouldered and the spitting image of his grandfather; the embodiment of everything Roderich’s Germanic “siblings” strove to be, everything that he himself was not no matter how hard he’d tried.

But Ludwig was much more than that – he was gentle, and warm, and soft, and loving; he had shreds of Roderich in him, of a boy who’d had to grow up too fast and with too much pressure from those around him, of a boy who felt and loved and whose heart broke too much and too often.

Roderich had never felt like he belonged. But here, with Ludwig at his side, enjoying the rare sunny day with him, it didn’t seem to matter that Roderich had never seen his grandfather smile at him with pride.

Because when Roderich announced it was time for music and Ludwig’s face lit up in a beatific smile and Roderich’s heart skipped a beat…

He realised he belonged just fine.


End file.
